nop, incredible, how many agencies exist?

Shotshop used to be pretty good in 2008, when I started. With a small portfolio I had regular sales, each sale was 15� (50% of 30�). Later they introduced multiple price points, tiers, upgraded the software... and my sales tanked.

Bildunion: I get a sale from time to time, prices are higher than microstock, payout is twice a year. Relatively slow in terms of sales but they pay 50%.

Fotocent: I never heard of them.

how is the uploading?

Yeah, I'd love to hear more from whoever submits to them like upload experience, review times, contributor support, sales volume depending on port size and/or their focus on what's most attractive there (btw. thanks for all the insider info).

I also would like to hear about other agencies in France, England, Switzerland, Spain etc.

I think there is still a lot of potential out there.

As far as I can tell Bildunion is in German only. Maybe it is better this way, after Panther and Shotshop opened to international contributors my earnings there dropped.
I translate keywords into German for Zoonar, Shotshop, Fotolia, Bildunion, Clipdealer, Bildmaschine.

So, do you mean its better to translate the keywording into German? Im thinking of Panther and Zonar.

I would keyword in German but at Panthermedia they don't want you to do that if your default language is set to English.

Yeah, its a bit confusing with these German agencis. Frankly I dont know if its worth the effort with them, like some of the British agencies, they seam to be lagging a bit behind the times.

Lucky were not with any French! they just simply hate the English language.

From Bildunion:
"Ihre Festplatte ist voll mit Bildmaterial, das eigentlich viel zu schade daf�r ist, ein solches Schattendasein zu fristen?"

Oh no! That dreadful hard disk full of images again... seems like I heard it before somewhere.

Seriously, I was thinking about semi-automated translation at IPTC level...
my idea is this:
- use exiftool to extract a list of English keywords from whole portfolio;
- sort list and delete duplicates;
- manually translate each word in the list to German; even if I can't speak German, I can probably translate each word better than machine translation, knowing the exact initial meaning of my own English keywords;
- reapply German keywords using exiftool;
Maybe one day when I'll have time to write a batch file...

The problem is caption and title translation.

Really? I am Italian but I never heard of Italian microstock agencies.

There is a number of news/fashion/art photography organisations in Italy representing a small number of photographers directly, but nothing like micro (or even macro) stock the way we know it - as far as I know.

Anyway - back when fotolia showed country of sales - I had a lot of German sales: it must be an interesting market.

Quote from: lagereek on June 14, 2011, 15:38

So, do you mean its better to translate the keywording into German? Im thinking of Panther and Zonar.

I create English and German versions of every image anyway.
I upload the German version to Zoonar and later paste the English keywords as well, because they also have international partners.
As far as I know, English + German keywords are recommended by the agency, when they send the photos to their partners the software filters the language.

As for Panther, long time ago I had some problems with finding my images keyworded in English. This may no longer be the case, but I don't have time to check it and I just got used to double keywording. Because I have relatively many cityscapes from Germany I think it is helpful, but for other people it may not be worthwile.

Do NOT keyword bilingual at Panthermedia. I asked that question last week to their support. This is what they sent me:

... grunds�tzlich ist es leider nicht erw�nscht, Suchbegriffe in verschiedenen Sprachen einzugeben.
Bitte w�hlen Sie f�r die Suchbegriffe immer die Sprache aus, die Sie im Anbieterportal unter \"Einstellungen\" als Hauptsprache gew�hlt haben. Sollte dort \"Deutsch\" stehen, so geben Sie bitte NUR deutsche Keywords an.

Es ist wichtig, nur in einer Sprache zu verschlagworten, damit unser �bersetzungsprogramm die Suchbegriffe bei jedem Bild auch richtig �bersetzen kann.

meaning:
only keyword in the language that is set to default in your profile. It is not recommended to enter keywords for each language as their translation software won't be able to translate the images properly.

REPLY FROM SHOTSHOP

Hello Luis Santos,

thanks for your interest in shotshop. We still took a closer look at your portfolio at shutterstock and we think that offering your pictures on our plattform doesn't make much sense. We're trying to seperate us from the several microstocks and we still have lots of this kind of stock images. I kindly ask for your understanding and wish you all the best.

best regards
Stephan Kr�mer

(others I have emailed still haven�t answered)

If you understand german you can join this german forum:

http://www.foto-talk.relota.com

They have many discussions about the german stock agencies.

Quote from: lagereek on June 16, 2011, 07:06

sauerkraut mate

looking at google pictures, hell no

Don't say that :-). Combined with Kasseler (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kassler) it is very good...

Quote from: luissantos84 on June 16, 2011, 08:47

Quote from: lagereek on June 16, 2011, 07:06

sauerkraut mate

looking at google pictures, hell no

Don't say that :-). Combined with Kasseler (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kassler) it is very good...

Yep! its very nice actually. In London there used to be a worldfamous hamburger restaurant called Woolfes,  specializing in German burgers with masses of sauerkraut , onions and mached potatoes, really nice.